The Anatomy of a Political Scandal

What makes controversy stick in places like Alberta?

Political scandals come and go, but some stick like gum on the bottom of a politician’s shoe—impossible to scrape off, no matter how hard they try.

So what makes a scandal truly damaging?

Here’s a list of components that, taken together, can make a scandal stick. These are not necessary or sufficient conditions, nor is my list comprehensive. Some politicians ride out a scandal. But the following list gives us some guidelines for assessing whether current events, like the Turkish Tylenol Affair, have the potential to topple a government.

1. Simplicity

If a scandal requires a flowchart to explain, it’s not going to land beyond the chattering classes. Voters don’t have time for legal minutiae or bureaucratic complexities. And leaders can exploit the complexities to avoid accountability.

✅ AdScam (2000s) – The federal Liberal government funneled taxpayer money into Quebec ad firms, which then kicked back cash to the party. That’s it. Easy to understand, easy to despise. It eventually toppled one of the most popular Prime Ministers in recent memory, Paul Martin.

❌ SNC-Lavalin (2019) – A convoluted legal dispute involving deferred prosecution agreements, lobbying, and internal government processes. By the time voters heard the whole story, most had tuned out. The Trudeau government didn't pay much of an electoral price for it.

2. A Visual Hook

Scandals that come with a viral image,or video, or audio harder. A good photo or clip can tell a story faster than any long-winded exposé.

✅ Kenney’s Sky Palace Patio Dinner (2021) – The infamous image of Kenney, Shandro, and others breaking their own COVID restrictions while dining on a penthouse patio burned itself into Alberta’s collective memory. It practically wrote its own memes.

✅ Redford’s Private Plane Scandal (2014) – Reports of her government staff falsifying passenger manifests so she could fly alone? That’s bad. But it was the image of the luxury Sky Palace that sealed her fate.

❌ The ArriveCAN App Spending Debacle (2023) – Bloated contracts and government inefficiency are bad, but without a damning image or visual, the scandal didn’t grab the public in the same way.

3. A Catchy Name

A scandal without a title is like a bad brand—forgettable. A scandal with a short, punchy handle can dominate headlines, memes, and hashtags.

✅ Aloha-gate (2020) – UCP MLAs vacationing in Hawaii while Albertans were locked down? The name hearkened back to Watergate, a similarly shady storyline from five decades earlier.

✅ Sky Palace I and II (2014, 2021) – This imaginary luxury suite became real enough to take down two premiers.

❌ WE Charity Scandal (2020) – Too vague. “WE” sounds positive, and “charity” makes it confusing. The story didn't travel well outside the right-wing social media world.

4. Align with Negative Reputation

Every brand has a weakness. Scandals stick when they confirm what people already suspect about a leader or party. If the controversy doesn't fit into a pre-set narrative, it can be hard for it to gain traction.

✅ Redford’s Entitlement Scandals (2014) – Unwittingly, the Alberta PCs had spent decades building an image of elitism and arrogance. As Janet Brown puts it: entitlement is Conservative kryptonite. Redford’s spending habits (private flights, the Sky Palace) only reinforced that perception.

❌ Trudeau’s Blackface (2019) – Horrible optics, but it didn’t confirm a Liberal Party weakness. If anything, it contradicted Trudeau’s brand as the progressive champion of diversity, making it shocking but not politically fatal. Hypocrisy is not a poison pill for politicians these days.

5. Needs a Villain

Every good scandal needs a clear bad guy—someone to be skewered in editorial cartoons, memes, and in some cases comedy.

✅ Jason Kenney & The Best Summer Ever– The Premier became the face of premature optimism about the end of the pandemic, and the target of several comedy shows. Kenney was also a perennial target for satire, like the Beaverton.

❌ Phoenix Pay System (2016–) – Tens of thousands of federal employees weren’t paid properly, but there was no singular villain to take the fall. A software glitch doesn’t inspire rage the way an entitled politician does.

6. Big Money or a Flagrant Moral Failing

Scandals about procedural errors or policy blunders don’t ignite public anger. Scandals about millions of wasted tax dollars or blatant misdeeds do.

✅ Alberta’s War Room Debacle (2019–) – A $30 million taxpayer-funded PR office that attacked a children’s cartoon? That’s a gift for political opponents.

❌ Senate Scandals (2000s) — Overpriced orange juice and camembert may make for water cooler fodder among political elites, but the controversies are tempests in teapots when you consider how little Canadians care or understand about the Senate or expense claims.

7. Needs to Have Legs

Scandals that end quickly don’t damage long-term. The best ones drag out due to unanswered queations, with parliamentary hearings, leaked documents, or shifting explanations.

✅ Danielle Smith’s Call with Artur Pawlowski (2023) – The leaked audio, her evolving explanations, and subsequent ethics complaints kept the story alive for weeks. Right into the provimcial election campaign.

❌ Chrétien’s Golf Ball Controversy (2001) – A one-day outrage over branded golf balls that never went anywhere.

8. Needs to Crack the Party

The most damaging scandals aren’t just public embarrassments—they divide the party, making internal fighting among elected officials spill into the open.

This is more difficult in a polarized environment, as I've written elsewhere:

Polarization begets democratic backsliding by convincing us that it’s okay to cheat if it means keeping our enemies out of power.

✅ Kenney’s Leadership Crisis (2021-22) – His handling of COVID (too strict for some, too weak for others) led to an internal rebellion that eventually forced him out.

❌ Poilievre’s Support for Truckers (2022) – Controversial, but the Conservative base rallied around him, preventing internal backlash.

The Perfect Alberta Scandal?

A scandal that hits all these marks is rare, but Alberta’s political history is full of close calls. If you were to engineer the perfect scandal, it would look something like this:

• A simple, easy-to-grasp issue.

• A killer visual (preferably a leaked photo or video).

• A snappy name (“Alohagate”, “Skybox Scandal”).

• A narrative that confirms existing fears about the party.

• A clear villain (preferably the leader).

• Massive waste or an obvious moral failing.

• Unanswered questions that demand investigations.

• Internal divisions that leave the leader vulnerable.

Sound familiar? If you were designing the perfect scandal to take down a premier or prime minister, this would be the playbook.